This is what I mean when I say I have some sort of mild social anxiety. I’m not sure if there is a specific name or disorder it could be filed under. But this is it. I am sitting here as I have been for the past four hours waiting for the time to leave for the bus station. The only reason for the rattled nerves is that I have never ridden a Greyhound bus before. I have never gone in there and picked up the ticket I already ordered online. I have already run through several scenarios in which the cashier hassles me about whether I paid for the ticket or not. Which I have. I have imagined the dirty kids running around the terminal and shifty characters eyeing my backpack with my laptop in it. I have pictured myself trying to pass the time unnoticed reading my book. I even created a scene of me being accosted about the book I am reading. I pictured the seat on the bus and the possible people that could take the seat next to me. I see myself trying to sleep with my arms tight around my bag and the fight that ensues when someone tries to steal it. I have planned out the logistics of trying to find a bar in Nashville so I can get a beer during my three hour layover. I consider whether I will be bothered if I bring my backpack with me to the bar by myself. Or will I meet someone that agrees to get a drink with me. Will I miss my bus or get on the wrong one or lose my suitcase?
All this blasts through my head all while I know that it will be a long boring uneventful journey. Completely mundane and pedestrian because it happens a hundred times a day to thousands of fellow travelers as it has since the dawn of motorized travel. I know I have nothing to worry about. The fact I have not been there and done it before or even seen someone I know do it before and the anticipation of heading into it alone is what ruffles my feathers. I am unsure of protocol and proper bus riding manners. All this worry will fade as soon as I take my seat but the next two hours up until that point has me typing much faster and less accurate than normal. I am awake, wired even. Counting down the minutes to the precise moment I calculated will get me there exactly an hour and a half early so I will not be chided for not picking my ticket up early enough. The rules state to pick up your ticket more than an hour before departure. I hope they did not change that rule or roll their eyes at me for not picking it up last week. At least I can laugh at myself and be completely freaked out at the same time.
See you in Little Rock.
From the other side of a Greyhound all looks fine from here. The trip was easy and uneventful except for the first hour. The diver for the first leg of the trip happened to be completely insane so it was a highly entertaining aspect that I had not accounted for. He nearly got into a fight with a man because he was naive enough to think that just because he had purchased the ticket in advance that he should expect to get a seat on the bus. Our crazy driver thought this was ridiculous, absurd even to think that this man and his wife should show up on time at the right place and expect to get what they had paid for. He vented these thoughts to those of us within earshot over the low hum of the wheels and bearings wearing out. Next he dropped a guy off at a Jack in the Box because the road to the terminal was closed and he did not feel like following the simple detour. The next ten minutes were spent ignoring traffic lights trying to do a u-turn in a bus on a two lane road. Reeling in any wriggling suspicions that this guy might not be the craziest driver in the roster.
The next eleven hours were exactly what could be expected of the cheapest form of motorized travel. Crying babies, snoring guys and people unfamiliar with boundaries and personal space; the tired, the poor, the glazed eyed masses standing in lines, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Gotta find a light to guide me along, gotta find a way back home.
